Why is the division number different between the Commons and the Lords?
Good question. In the Commons, Division No. 1 is the first vote of the Parliamentary session or year, but in the Lords it is the first vote of the day. It would appear that, although both Houses are in the same building and operate the same procedure, they are run on completely different sets of paperwork that may have been the same at one point in the past, but has since evolved apart. We would be grateful to someone with access to some very old volumes of Hansard if they could check out when these different numbering systems became established and let us know. With great difficulty, we have generalized the software that supports Public Whip to run both houses after it was initially designed only to run the Commons. We therefore have learnt more about the syntactic incompatibilities between the two houses than we care to know. The process is frought with possible errors. Please email us if you see any mistakes where we have said that the MPs were ‘Content’.
